


December 24th, 1914

by soft_october



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-29 10:43:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19018285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_october/pseuds/soft_october
Summary: “I knew I'd find you here," the angel’s voice is choked, desperate, “This is one of yours, it has to be one of yours-” and for once Crowley wants to lie to him as much as Aziraphale wants it to be true.Hiding out from a battlefield in 1914 in uniforms of opposing sides, an angel and a demon witness both the destructive power of humanity and it's endless capacity for love.





	December 24th, 1914

The moment they step through the ruined stone wall, Aziraphale grabs the demon by the collar and shakes him.

“I knew I'd find you here," the angel’s voice is choked, desperate, “This is one of yours it has to be one of yours-” and for once Crowley wants to lie to him as much as Aziraphale wants it to be true, wants to claim the bombs and the blood and the trenches in the name of Hell, wants to tell him this whole thing is just a really awful joke some demons decided to play on the world that got terribly out of hand, how else to explain the comedy of errors that was the assassination of the archduke which started the whole thing? But he’s never lied to Aziraphale, well, not about these sorts of things anyway, and he’s not about to start now in this bombed out cottage outside of Saint-Yves, not where the winter wind is tearing through the holes in the wall and the shells bursting close enough that each puncture of the earth causes the whole structure to tremble and rain down dirt upon an angel and a demon wearing English and German uniforms. And so, gently, Crowley takes Aziraphale’s hands away from his neck, and tells him the truth.

“No, angel. They did this all themselves.”

“But this - this - why would they do _this_ ?" He gestures wildly to the shattered emptiness surrounding them. "What is this war even _for_?”

Crowley only shrugs. He doesn't know, and doesn't want to speculate: the fight has gone out of him. He’s tired and wants to be back home, in London, where he could hide himself in his flat, throw the bedspread over his head and sleep until the images of bodies mangled on barbed wire and machine gun nests could find their way down to the depths of his thoughts, where Hell and the Crusades and the fourteenth century and the Inquisition lay stifled into submission, rising only to prey on him in his most vulnerable moments. But no. He must be here, because Hell said so, because free will only goes so far in creatures such as he and the angel.

The angel.

Crowley stops feeling sorry for himself long enough to focus on Aziraphale, whose fire is sorely dimmed. He doesn’t want to be here either, wants to be home in his cozy bookstore preening over his fancy collection, or sitting in his chair in the back of the shop reading with a glass of wine, everything all warm and gold and far from this frigid moonlit night. If he would try being honest with himself, and he rarely is where Aziraphale is concerned, Crowley wants to be there too, sprawled out over the sofa, needling the angel with pointless questions and observations until Aziraphale finally puts his book down and they can go out for supper or take a walk to the park or start an argument about what seems very important at the time but ends up being nothing at all, something normal, something _nice_. Instead, the angel is trapped here just as sure as Crowley is, stuffed into a uniform which doesn’t suit him at all and made to watch as thousands of soldiers die for absolutely nothing.

“Look,” Crowley finds himself saying, scrambling for something to bring the luster back to the angel's dull eyes. “Let’s just -” but the thought of finding some water and miracling it into scotch and getting properly smashed dies on his tongue. It wouldn’t do any good in the end, he knows, and there is not a single shred of normal to be found in this terrible place not contained within the whole of the angel currently sinking to the floor and leaning back against the wall of a cottage where a farmer and his family once lived and worked and played.

At least the shelling has stopped.

After a moment's hesitation, Crowley joins Aziraphale on the floor, so close that Crowley can feel the warmth radiating off the angel, and wonders what would happen if he slumped, as if in exhaustion, a little bit further to the right and rested his head upon the angel’s shoulder. Would the angel lean into him, as he has on occasion before, when the hour is late and they're both three sheets to the wind and sitting in the debris of empty glasses and dessert plates scraped clean, only to remember himself and pull away with an embarrassed laugh and a cold spot on Crowley's arm where his cheek had been? Or would he cling to him, as he had in 1348, when Crowley found him in a Florentine church, surrounded by the dead and dying victims of La Pestilenza, where he had buried his face in Crowley's tunic and muttered nonsense about the ineffable plan until Crowley walked them out into the daylight and they left the place behind. Would Aziraphale allow Crowley the same courtesy, let the demon collapse into the angel’s embrace and wonder aloud about the whys and the wherefores of the planet and the miserable little people on it?

He doesn't know, and because it's easier not to try, he keeps that safe mote of space between them, and stews in their silent screams.

But he is soon shaken into awareness by another sound drifting over the pockmarked fields, only this one isn’t whistles or booms, and so out of place Crowley worries he is going a little out of his head, like so many soldiers in this short and loathsome war. Nevertheless, the sound continues, though he wills it to stop, and he cannot follow the rise and fall of voices. He rises from the floor, and looks out at the trenches, at no man's land, and listens.

“Do you hear that?” asks Crowley, dragging Aziraphale out from where he has been caught up in his own head. For a minute there’s nothing at all but the ghosts of exploding mortars, but then-

But how can there be -

Why would -

“Is that - is someone singing?” he asks, but Crowley is gone, already stepped through the wall and hurrying across the fields without another word, and Aziraphale is left alone. Foolish to leave, Aziraphale thinks, petulantly. It’s quiet now, but soon enough there will be shells crashing and bullets zipping through the air and he does not want to suffer a discorportation here, not in this awful place, doesn’t very much want the demon to go through it either, but Crowley is back before he can begin to worry, and his eyes are wide not with horror, but with something like awe.

“Angel,” he mutters, and he takes Aziraphale by the arm. “Angel, you need to come see this.” His manner does not leave room for argument, not that Aziraphale is capable of putting up much resistance, and he allows himself to be led out across the barren expanse which no longer wails with the instruments of destruction, but with another sound all together. Aziraphale tucks his arm in closer, presses into the demon’s side, feels the realness of him, confirms this is not some kind of waking dream.

“Crowley, what are they doing?” his voice is hushed anticipation, doubting his own ears, terrified that Crowley will tell him that they aren't-

"They're singing, angel. They're singing - they're singing Christmas carols."

The Germans finish a verse of _Stille Nacht_ , and the next picked up at once in English by the soldiers across a tangle of bombshell craters and barbed wire. The angel and the demon stand together in stunned silence in the bitter cold as Silent Night concludes and is followed by _Adeste Fideles_ from both sides of the front, the echoes of English and German voices as united in song as their rifles were in volley not three hours before. The officers rise from the trenches with words of truce and peace, tentatively walk across the space still consecrated by the bodies of those who have already fallen to shake hands with each other, offer Christmas greetings, and their men are soon to follow.

“Did you do this?” Crowley breathes, his mind unable to reconcile what he is witnessing with his own eyes and ears even though they sting with songs praising the heavens, as men who were shelling each other just hours before - men told time and time again by their commanding officers that those in the trench across the hateful stretch of no-man’s land are the enemy, that they’re monsters, that they need to be snuffed out - now emerge from the trenches to huddle in groups, smiling at each other and showing off pictures of their children and their sweethearts and wives, trading rations and exchanging addresses, promising to write, to take letters across the lines to friends or lovers who have been separated from those at the front by the machinations of princes and kings.

It should be completely absurd, but how can it be, when Crowley understands more than most?

Here are two sets of soldiers with far more in common with each other than those who have been left behind, who have both crouched with terror in the same mud while bombs exploded above their heads, struggled through the same diseases, the same nightmares, waiting for their superiors, who sit in a soft office somewhere, miles from the front lines, to call down the orders that will send them to their own reward, like all their fellow soldiers who have gone before. It’s too close, _too close_ to Crowley’s own situation, for are not he and the angel just like these men, who have none to cling too but each other as the world comes apart at the seams around them?

 “This must be one of yours.” Crowley says, stronger this time, wondering if the angel heard him. Aziraphale, with a smile so wide and beautiful he is practically glowing, takes Crowley’s hand and entwines their fingers.

“No, my dear,” he replies after a moment.  “They did this all themselves.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, kudos and comments are always appreciated and feel free to check out some of my other Good Omens stories, or hit me up on Tumblr [@soft-october-night](https://soft-october-night.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] December 24, 1914](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20439134) by [soft_october](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_october/pseuds/soft_october)




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